Re: January Update - Pew Clean Energy Business Network

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Phyllis Cuttino, Pew Environment Group <advocacyemail@pewtrusts.org> wrote:

Dear Clean Energy Business Leader: Happy New Year and welcome to the first edition of the Clean Energy Business Network Newsletter, an informational report written just for businesses within America's clean energy economy. In June, 2009 the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report, The Clean Energy Economy: Repowering Jobs, Businesses and Investments Across America, which provided the first-ever hard count of environmentally friendly jobs, businesses, and investments across all 50 states. From this effort, we identified more than 68,200 businesses which account for more than 770,000 jobs - so that we may reach out and offer useful information for growing companies like your own. Each newsletter will provide you with updates about what Capitol Hill and the White House are working on to help grow the Clean Energy Economy and build America's global competitiveness. We will seek out opportunities which you may not yet have heard about, but may benefit your business. Plus, we can help you reach out to your representatives to have your voice heard. We are interested in your feedback and ideas about what you want to learn more about. Please send questions and comments to Jessica Lubetsky at jlubetsky@pewtrusts.org. Thank you, Phyllis Cuttino Campaign Director, Climate and Energy Programs Pew Environment Group   Newsletter Contents 1. U.S. Clean Power Sector Could Attract $342 Billion By 2020 2. We Can Make Progress On Clean Energy 3. Department of Labor Wants to Know How You Did It Successfully   1. U.S. Clean Power Sector Could Attract $342 Billion By 2020: The United States could attract $342 billion in clean power project investments over the next decade, according to the latest report released by The Pew Charitable Trusts and its research partner, Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The U.S. is among the three G-20 members with the most to gain by implementing strong clean energy policies. Additionally, strong policies could better position the U.S. to compete more effectively for a share of the $2.3 trillion that could be invested globally in clean power projects over the next 10 years. Global Clean Power: A $2.3 Trillion Opportunity examined projected private investment in wind, solar, biomass/energy from waste, small hydro, geothermal and marine energy projects. The underlying data for this report were compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the world's leading provider of news, data and analysis on clean energy and carbon market finance and investment. The report modeled three policy scenarios to determine future growth through 2020: Business-as-usual: no change from current policies; Copenhagen: policies to implement the pledges made at the 2009 international climate negotiations in Copenhagen and; Enhanced clean energy: maximized policies designed to stimulate increased investment and capacity additions. In the U.S., total attracted clean power project investment is projected to be: Business-as-usual: $245 billion by 2020 Copenhagen: $259 billion by 2020 Enhanced clean energy: $342 billion by 2020 Other key U.S. findings include: The projected $342 billion in clean power project investment over the next decade would leverage installation of 171 GW of generating capacity, essentially tripling the amount of clean power that exists in the U.S. today. Over the next 10 years, the U.S. could attract $97 billion of additional clean power project investments under the enhanced scenario compared to business-as-usual. Read more from the report.   2. We Can Make Progress On Clean Energy When President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, it marked the largest initiative on energy that the nation had taken since the 1970's. At the time, he stated, "We make a major step toward reducing our dependence on oil, confronting global climate change, expanding production of renewable fuels and giving future generations a nation that is stronger, cleaner and more secure." If there is anything we learned during that debate, it's that Democrats and Republicans can work together to pass meaningful energy legislation. The bill was supported by an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate. When it comes to issues that matter to much of our country - namely, protecting national security, spurring innovation, reducing dependence on foreign oil, reviving the economy and creating jobs—we should be talking partnership not partisanship. Americans, and the Democrats and Republicans who represent us in Congress, can no longer prolong this energy stalemate. Read more.   3. Department of Labor Wants to Know How You Did It Successfully Over the next year, The U.S. Department of Labor will collect examples of actions that organizations and businesses have taken to support green job growth while at the same time adopt climate friendly actions. A sampling of best practices will be featured in a guide to be released on Earth Day 2011. To be considered as a featured best practice. Please describe (in 150 words or less) how your company has changed or adopted a plan to create green jobs within your company/organization and helped spur economic growth. Submissions will be evaluated, among other things, to the extent they provide insights as to the following: How your company's/organization's actions were climate friendly; How your company's/organization's actions contributed to the economy, including the creation of new & safe green jobs; and Motivations for the decision to make climate-friendly changes that support green job growth and how the changes were accomplished. Each submission should also include the name of the business or organization, location, and contact information. Submit your "Turning Green to Gold, Safely" best practice.

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com

Green Building Product News - The Builders Show!

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Green Building Product News <Green_Building_Product_News@mail.vresp.com> wrote:

Green Product Digest  –  Builders Show 2011 Exhibitors Preview
	A Sneak Peek at Key Manufacturers' Exhibits at the NAHB Builders Show   The International Builders Show (Jan. 12-15 in Orlando, FL) is the largest showcase for building materials and practices on earth. In addition to its enormous indoor exhibit space, there are also sample homes outside the hall, plus a very impressive schedule of training seminars. There are plenty of classes in green building techniques for builders who seek to become Certified Green Professionals. Look below for some key exhibitors at this year's show:       Accumix • Booth W1391 AccuMix is the first ever thermostatic temperature controlled water heater with an ASSE 1070-2004 code-compliant mechanical integrated mixing valve which meets the provisions of UPC 413.1. This energy efficient unit is perfectly suited for use in public restrooms in retail stores, restaurants, medical environments, office buildings, factories, schools, or any commercial building.   Eemax • Booth W1391 Estimates show that 20% of water is wasted down the drain due to the time it takes for hot water to reach the faucet. The solution: boosting central heating systems at  point-of-use with an Eemax 2.5 or 4 gallon mini-tank water heater for near-instant hot water. The mini-tank line is easy to install, cost-effective, compact, plugs directly into a 110/120 wall outlet, and is floor or wall mountable. Huber Engineered Woods • Booth 3121 Huber Engineered Woods (HEW) linerless tape improves the ease and speed of installing its ZIP System roof and wall sheathing, which delivers superior moisture management and a tighter building envelope than traditional air barrier assemblies. The new linerless tape will be introduced along with new high-wind panels, and HEW will also demonstrate its AdvanTech subflooring. Kohler • Booth W2501 The Kohler Wellworth toilet line, with Class Five® flushing technology, now offers a model that will flush just 1.28 gallons. This water-conserving toilet can save a family of four 16,500 gallons of water and is certified with EPA's WaterSense label for using 20 percent less water than standard 1.6-gallon toilets while still meeting flushing performance guidelines.     Maze Nails, Booth W4286 Maze Nails is the nation's largest domestic manufacturer of hand-driven nails and nails for  pneumatic tools. While the company is best known for its hot-dipped galvanized nails – ideal for pressure treated lumber – they also produce nails for virtually every construction application. Maze Nails are SCS Certified to contain at least 85% recycled content (65% post consumer), which means that using Maze Nails exclusively on a project can contribute credits towards NAHB-Green certification.     Moen • Booth W1901 Moen will be showing off their elegant Eco-Performance showerheads, lavatories, and kitchen faucets. Key products include EPA WaterSense certified products such as the LIndley faucet, a model that offers advance features such as quiet flow, pull-down head, side-mounted single handle control, and a special water-saving function. As a company, Moen has earned the EPA's WaterSense Partner distinction.   The Original Rainwater Pillow • Booth W208 The Original Rainwater Pillow is an innovative rainwater harvesting system designed to be stored in horizontal wasted space (in crawl space or under deck), with pillow sizes from 2,000 to 200,000 gallons. Collected water can  be economically used to water lawn & garden areas. The Original Rainwater Pillow is a Green Approved Product for the National Green Building Standard.   Progress Lighting • Booth W4259 An Energy Star Partner of the Year, Progress Lighting has developed the Pro-Optic  collection, featuring 6" and 8" horizontal and vertical downlights for an easy, cost effective way to upgrade any competitive light housing to more energy efficient sources in existing spaces. Available with LED and CFL options, Pro-Optic Retrofit offers energy savings for a variety of remodeling applications.     Touch 'n Seal • Booth W5690 Touch 'n Seal CPDS Series 2 delivers both open and closed cell, Class 1 fire-retardant foam for use in sealing and insulating applications. Using an adjustable constant delivery rate, the operator can apply polyurethane spray foam to horizontal or vertical surfaces. CPDS Series 2 fits in the back of a standard truck and easily fits through standard doorways. Touch 'n Seal foams contain no CFCs and are Intl. Residential Code compliant.    Uponor • Booth W1728 Uponor's ProPEX® Lead-free Brass Fire Sprinkler Adapter is made of lead-free brass to conform to new lead-free plumbing requirements, and provide a cost-effective alternative to stainless-steel adapters. The adapter features Uponor's cold-expansion ProPEX fitting system for strong, durable and reliable connections without the need for torches, glues, solvents or gauges.   VacuFlo • Booth W4692 VACUFLO and Dirt Devil® Central Vacuum Systems play a unique role in green homes by removing 100% of vacuumed dirt and dust, ensuring healthy indoor air and reducing the discomfort of allergy sufferers by more than 60%. The systems also offer the benefits of a lifetime warranty so they won't end up in landfills. No additional electricity is required when using turbine powerheads for carpet, and their sound-dampening design leads to a quieter living space.   THE MONEY QUOTE: The green home building and remodeling market has reached the mainstream. As the leader in the nation's residential green-building movement, NAHB provides education, information and research to promote environmentally sensitive land development, resource conservation and energy and water efficiency. 'Green Day' celebrates advances in sustainable design and construction as well as new products and materials as the industry converges in Orlando for the largest light construction show in the world. National Association Home Builders

---

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com

Costs of catastrophes jumped in 2010

	Jan 3, 2011	Associated Press Online
	KIRSTEN GRIESHABER BERLIN, Jan. 3, 2011 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- BERLIN (AP) — A leading reinsurer said Monday that extreme natural catastrophes in 2010, including severe earthquakes, floods and heat waves, led to the sixth-highest total of insurers' losses since 1980 and showed evidence of climate change. Munich Re AG said in its annual review that insured losses came in at $37 billion (euro27.69 billion) this year, up from $22 billion in 2009. It said total economic losses, including losses not covered by insurance, rose to $130 billion from last year's $50 billion. "The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," the company said in a statement. Altogether a total of 950 natural catastrophes were recorded last year, including five "great natural catastrophes:" the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and central China, the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan. This total makes 2010 the year with the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980, according to Munich Re. The company wrote that 2010 not only resulted in substantial losses, but also an exceptionally high number of fatalities. More than 220,000 people were killed in the earthquake in Haiti in January, making it one of the most devastating earthquakes in the last 100 years. The heat wave in Russia between July and September led to burning forests, with fires threatening nuclear facilities and areas where the ground had been contaminated by the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. "At least 56,000 people died as a result of heat and air pollution, making it the most deadly disaster in Russia's history," the reinsurer wrote. In Pakistan, floods following extreme monsoon rainfall covered one quarter of the country for weeks. The overall loss totaled $9.5 billion — "an extremely high amount for Pakistan's emerging economy," the annual report said. Munich Re also said that 2010 was one of the severest hurricane seasons in the past 100 years, but that, fortunately, "most of the storms remained over the open sea." Altogether, there were 19 named tropical cyclones and 12 of these storms attained hurricane strength. Munich Re also mentioned in its report the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland in April, which brought European air traffic to a standstill. While there were few direct damages, the interruptions in supplies and important goods to industrial firms meant that the event ended up costing billions. Newstex ID: AP-0001-50632432

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com

Republicans - Are they Blind to Climate Change?

I don't agree with everything the Sierra Club Promotes
but I do approve of their Global Warming
ie: Climate Change Stance. 

		Scotty,  Stand Up to Republican's New Attacks on the EPA and our Health - Send a Message! The Republican leadership has made its choice and it makes us sick.  It took them exactly one day in office to show their true colors and declare an all-out war on the Clean Air Act and the EPA.1 Contact your members of Congress today and tell them that these Republican attacks on the EPA and our health make us sick. House Republicans like Rep. Issa (R-CA), Upton (R-MI), and Carter (R-TX) are trying to dismantle the public health protections we've fought so hard for, all for one simple reason  - to support oil and coal polluters' bottom line.  The current EPA rule for cement plants Republicans are working to eviscerate will cause up to 2,500 premature deaths a year, 13,000 days of work missed due to pollution related health problems, and cost our economy at least $6.7 billion.2  It's a stark choice between our health and corporate greed.  Republican leaders have made their choice – where will your legislators stand? Send your members of Congress a letter and make sure they are as outraged about this power-grab for corporate polluters as we are. Let's be clear. Rolling back the cement rule is just the first of many corporate supported efforts to halt progress in protecting our health and environment. It's time to draw a line in the sand. Our elected officials can stand with us and fight for our health and communities or stand with the polluters, their bank accounts, and their pro-asthma, pro-heart attack, pro-sickness agenda.  Send a message to your members of Congress to make sure they stand with us and not with corporate polluters. Thanks for all that you do to protect the environment. Sarah Hodgdon Sierra Club, Conservation Director P.S. Please forward this message and help spread the word to your friends and family! [1] "E.P.A. Faces First Volley from the House," New York Times: January 6, 2011. [2] "Portland Cement: Factsheet," Earthjustice Factsheet: 2010.

Sierra Club
85 Second St.
San Francisco, CA 94105

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com

Re: Green News from Chicago IL

• As a point of reference, cars emit about 25 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of gas.

• Transportation emissions account for 29 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions,

• one out of five trips and one out of four miles are traveled in commutes

	For green builders in 2011, it's the journey that matters
	Jan 6, 2011	Chicago Tribune
	By Julie Wernau Jan. 6, 2011  -- If you plop a green building in the middle of nowhere, is it still green?That's exactly what businesses, sustainability experts and planners are trying to find out. The growing "green buildings" movement is taking a new direction with the development of computer models that go beyond measuring a building's carbon footprint and attempt to quantify the amount of energy people consume to reach that building. Take Exelon's (NYSE:EXC) uber-green headquarters in downtown Chicago, with its energy-efficient lighting, intelligent heating, ventilation and cooling systems that power down on command, and lights that shut off automatically when a room is unoccupied. If we could airlift that building to the Illinois suburb of Hoffman Estates, how green would it be? A calculator developed recently by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology shows that with Exelon in the downtown district, 55 percent of its employees take public transportation to work and a small percentage bike or walk. But in Hoffman Estates, where public transportation is scarce, 99 percent of those employees would drive to work, with only 10 percent carpooling.The energy spent commuting to Hoffman Estates, measured in British thermal units, would double. And each employee would add 22.9 pounds of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere per day just getting to and from work there as opposed to 16.2 pounds to the Loop site. (As a point of reference, cars emit about 25 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of gas.) Experts say the ability to quantify the energy spent getting to and from a building could force businesses to reconsider what it means to be "green." Transportation emissions account for 29 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the newly quantifiable data could spur development in urban areas served by public transportation. Commutes to work matter, said Emma Stewart, senior manager for sustainability at Autodesk, a California-based maker of 3-D design software applications. Overall, one out of five trips and one out of four miles are traveled in commutes, according to Census Transportation Planning Products. For work, people fly to conferences, hail cabs on lunch breaks and drive to far-flung suburbs. "This is a new frontier in carbon accounting," said Stewart, who is part of a separate effort to digitally map buildings and infrastructure (like train lines) for urban planning purposes. "The practice thus far has really been focused around direct emissions. "Indirect emissions, like travel emissions, are harder to control, she said, but once quantified can be managed.Autodesk, she said, is encouraging employees to teleconference to meetings and has added the equipment to make that possible after measuring the kilowatt hours the company invested in transporting employees to events, conferences, expos and internal meetings."We now have 18 telepresence sites, 50 roundtable systems, and every employee has the right to a webcam," she said. Opponents to the new green order are companies that have traditionally built in more remote areas because land is cheaper, said Martha VanGeem, head of Chicago-based CTLGroup's building science and sustainability practice.VanGeem helped draft and develop the ASHRAE Standard 189.1, which is a system from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers that is similar to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, but in a format for building codes. To be green, the ASHRAE standard requires that buildings be located in developed areas or within walking distance of at least 10 different services (grocery stores, restaurants, banks, etc.), a train or subway station, a bus stop or apartments or condos. Adding that standard was a fight, VanGeem said, particularly among large manufacturing companies."We're trying to reduce a building's footprint, but what we found is that commuters are having a bigger footprint than the buildings themselves a lot of times," she said. "So we have to focus on the commuters. "More than 60 percent of businesses leasing commercial office space (and the people who work for them) say a building's proximity to transportation is an important factor in their decision to lease space and for quality of life, according to a survey of managers and building occupants by McGraw-Hill (NYSE:MHP) Construction."It's kind of implicit in some things, right?" said Peter Hass, chief research scientist at the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago. "When you get an apartment, and it says, 'near the "L," ' for instance, they could charge more for rent. There's implicit value there."But thus far, quantifying how location affects carbon footprints has been a challenge. Since its launch in 2000, LEED, the bible of green certification systems, has focused mostly on the building, not where it is located. The system gives points for locating a building near public transportation and other services, but organizations such as the Sustainable Sites Initiative have argued that the standards lack comprehensive criteria. In 2008, the American Physical Society found that "the lack of an agreed-upon method for quantifying these issues" was a significant obstacle for policymakers."Different studies frame the questions in different ways, and different sources provide different predictions that are qualitatively in agreement but yield slightly different, or mutually incomparable, predictions," the group wrote.But greater interest in the energy expended in commuting and other travel recently led the U.S. Green Building Council, the authors of LEED, to retool that focus. It has hired the Center for Neighborhood Technology to research a tool that can predict the energy required to travel to a building based on its location.Using a complex formula that combines transportation and census data, the center developed a free online tool, launching in early 2011, that promises to deliver that kind of information in a matter of minutes. Interest in the Transportation Energy Index from sustainability managers, transportation alliances, urban planners and even the federal government is intense because the tool could alter the green world order.The center admits its tool is still far from perfect."You have to understand why the people get there, how far they have to go, what kind of transportation they use, what the energy impact is of that," Haas said.The tool uses "as the crow flies" miles, rather than mapped routes to determine the transportation efficiency of a building. It relies on census data and the National Transit Database to determine where visitors are generally traveling from and the modes of transportation they are likely to use or have available.And it can get even more complicated. A grocery store, for instance, will have a different breakdown of visitors and trips than a law firm. Also, the more money a person earns, the farther they are likely to travel to work, Haas said, and the more energy they are likely to use. Some CEOs commute to work by jet.The tool attempts to handle such elements with menus that allow the user to enter the primary use of a building and the average salary of its employees. To further tweak the mathematical model, users can also type in square footage, average daily visitors and the number of days per year the building is open.Without that information, they rely on census averages and data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, such as the average size of a typical office building, the average days a nursing facility is open or the average salary of someone who works in a school, for example.It also doesn't take into account regional differences, said Linda Young, research director for the Center for Neighborhood Technology. For instance, some cities have hybrid bus systems or all-electric train lines that expend far less energy than their diesel-spewing counterparts. Young said the center would like to develop a post-occupancy tool that allows users to survey and enter data based on the responses of employees."This is the first iteration of this calculator out there. We want people to be able to look at it, play with it, provide some feedback," she said.The idea, she said, is to give businesses a metric so that they can improve."Certain things can affect it: Encouraging biking, adding a kitchen so that employees don't have to leave for lunch, offering transportation passes," she said. Newstex ID: KRTN-0007-50703678

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com

Re: News: More Republican Skepticism on Climate Change and Global Warming

On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Scott's Contracting <scottscontracting@gmail.com> wrote:

Scientist proves conservatism and belief in climate change aren't incompatible
	Jan 5, 2011	Los Angeles Times
	Neela Banerjee Jan. 5, 2011 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- REPORTING FROM CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- According to the conventional wisdom that liberals accept climate change and conservatives don't, Kerry Emanuel is an oxymoron. Emanuel sees himself as a conservative. He believes marriage is between a man and a woman. He backs a strong military. He almost always votes Republican and admires Ronald Reagan. Emanuel is also a highly regarded professor of atmospheric science at MIT. And based on his work on hurricanes and the research of his peers, Emanuel has concluded that the scientific data show a powerful link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. "There was never a light-bulb moment but a gradual realization based on the evidence," Emanuel said. "I became convinced by the basic physics and by the better and better observation of the climate that it was changing and it was a risk that had to be considered." As a politically conservative climatologist who accepts the broad scientific consensus on global warming, Emanuel occupies a position shared by only a few scientists. In much the same role that marriage and abortion played in previous election cycles, denial of climate change has now become a litmus test for the right. The vast majority of Republicans elected to Congress during the midterm election doubt climate science, and senior congressional conservatives -- Republican and Democrat -- have vowed to fight Obama administration efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. That's why scientists such as Emanuel rattle the political pigeonholes. Some are speaking out, using their expertise and conservative credentials to challenge what many researchers consider widespread distortions about climate change. Texas Tech atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian who travels widely talking to conservative audiences and wrote a book with her husband, a pastor and former climate change denier, explaining climate change to skeptics. A physicist by training, John Cook is an evangelical Christian who runs the website skepticalscience.com, which seeks to debunk climate change deniers' arguments. Barry Bickmore is a Mormon, a professor of geochemistry at Brigham Young University and the blogger behind Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah, where he recently rebuked Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) for his climate views and posted editorials mentioning his Republican affiliation. Emanuel waded into the fray early last year. He wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal criticizing a friend and colleague for dismissing the evidence of climate change and clinging "to the agenda of denial." Then Emanuel added his name to the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, a website run by scientists to provide accurate information from top researchers in climate-related fields. "I've always rebelled against the thinking that ideology can trump fact," said Emanuel, 55. "The people who call themselves conservative these days aren't conservative by my definition. I think they're quite radical." Paradoxically, over the last 40 years, it was conservative Republican administrations that pushed through the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the signing of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act. But today, most conservatives have lined up against scientists -- and transformed what started out as a technical issue into one dominated by ideology and sometimes religion. "Kerry is a self-avowed conservative," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist who called Emanuel "a leading light" in the field. "But that has no bearing on his view that human-caused climate change is a reality -- that, after all, is a scientific issue, not a political issue," he said. A 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that only 6% of scientists called themselves Republicans, compared with 55% who identified themselves as Democrats. A separate October 2009 Pew survey showed a marked decline from 18 months earlier in the number of people who accept global warming, with only a third of Republican respondents saying they saw solid evidence of climate change, the lowest percentage among any partisan group. "Conservatives tend to gravitate to skepticism because conservatives are inherently suspicious of an expanding government taking more and more of their money and liberty," wrote James M. Taylor, senior fellow in environment policy at the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank in Chicago. "On the other hand, liberals tend to gravitate to alarm-ism because they have little fear of an expansive government and tend to welcome government replacing private individuals or corporations as key drivers of the global economy," he said. Emanuel dislikes applying the word "skeptic" to those who deny climate change. He says all scientists are skeptical; that's the nature of the field. His own innate skepticism meant that it took him longer than his colleagues to be persuaded of climate change, Emanuel said. He remembers thinking it ridiculous when a noted climatologist told Congress in 1988 that he was all but certain that the climate was changing. Yet, as analysis of climate data advanced through the 1990s and Emanuel found a relationship between hurricanes and climate change in his own work, he came to see a link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Climate change deniers, including many in Congress, contend that because the science is not "settled," the government should not act to curtail greenhouse gases. "Scientists are being asked to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is an imminent danger before we as a society do anything," Emanuel said. "The parallel to that is saying, 'You won't buy property insurance unless I can prove to you that your house will catch on fire right now.' " Although more scientists are pushing back against climate change denial, Emanuel is not convinced it can help, given the corporate interests and the weight of the GOP arrayed against them. All of this is making him reconsider his political loyalties: For the first time in his life, he voted for a Democrat, Barack Obama, in 2008. "I am a rare example of a Republican scientist, but I am seriously thinking about changing affiliation owing to the Republicans' increasingly anti-science stance," he wrote in an e-mail. "The best way to elevate the number of Republican scientists is to get Republican politicians to stop beating up on science and scientists." neela.banerjee@latimes.com Newstex ID: KRTB-1430-50678828

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com

Solar Electric System 2011 Special

For the First Quarter of 2011-St Louis Renewable Energy, Green Builder Scotts Contracting will be offering a reduced labor charge for the Installation of Solar Electric Systems on NFP (Not-For-Profit) Organizations.

Click Here For Additional Information or to see if you business qualifies for the Solar Electric Special email: scotty, at scottscontracting@gmail.com